3 Strategies to Keep Your Painting Business Sales Pipeline Full

Running a business is difficult. It becomes even more of a challenge as it grows beyond just a few employees working on a referral basis. One of the biggest struggles in the painting business is keeping your sales pipeline full as you expand your operation beyond six figures.

Some of the obstacles that prevent a business from keeping it’s sales pipeline full stem from the ability to diversify how you keep track of clients, how you get new clients, and how you follow-up with old ones.

These become particularly difficult when the volume your business is doing is 2x or even 3x what you started out working with.

In this article, I’m going to cover:

Strategies for Keeping Track of Customers

Diversifying how Your Business Acquires Clients

Effective Follow-ups for Past Clients

Strategies for Keeping Track of Customers

When anyone starts out in the painting business, it’s easy to know who you’re working with today, and what job is up next. That’s because a new painting business, most likely, isn’t juggling 30 jobs at a time. In the early stages of business, an organized Google calendar would do the trick.

But what happens when your business has 7 jobs running simultaneously, a team of salesmen booking estimates, and a production manager that already spends 13 hours a day keeping tabs on everything?

The plan you had in place of using that Google calendar will, most likely fall apart. A failed method of organization will, often, lead to missed opportunities for sales, poor service, and no referral at the end of a job. In other words, your sales pipeline will begin to drain.

Which is why we recommend using a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platform.

CRM services, for a low monthly fee, create a central hub for you and your team to keep track of tasks. With the proper upkeep, new contacts can be added and assigned to the person in-charge of overseeing their job. Any special requests or notes can be added in so that everyone on your team is aware of that customer’s needs.

Additionally, as a job progresses, whoever is in charge of managing that job can schedule follow-up calls or customer satisfaction surveys. At the end of the job, a member of your team can mark it finished, and add in a follow-up date for a few years down the road.

Ultimately, a CRM helps ensure completion of the sales cycle every customer should experience. It organizes work flow, and can almost guarantee that you are maximizing the value of a customer while, simultaneously keeping them happy with your service.

Diversifying how Your Business Acquires Clients

Free marketing is great. Which is why Painting Business Pro recommends door-to-door sales from the start. But it doesn’t always scale with the size of your company. It isn’t feasible to knock on every door in your surrounding area every year.

Therefore, diversifying how your business acquires clients is paramount for continued growth. Luckily for business owners, the avenues in place for marketing are plenty.

Here are Some of Our Recommended Ways of Acquiring New Clients:

Use lawn signs at every job

Hand out door hangers in the neighborhood you’re currently painting in

Set up Facebook ads

Always Ask for a referral

Retarget anyone who visits your site using Google Ads

Ideally, all your business would have to do is put out some ads, and inbound sales would keep your sales pipeline topped off. Unfortunately, that rarely how this business works.

Changing up how customers see your brand is essential to succeeding, simply due to the quantity of painting contractors that are always seeking work proactively.

Word of mouth is the primary way painting contractors get new work. So how can your company win business over the guy who is friends with your customer’s cousin?

Your brand has to be present everywhere. Your customer has to be so aware of your company that, whenever ‘painting’ comes to mind, they think of YOUR company.

Effective Follow-ups for Past Clients

Properly following up with previous clients circles back to keeping track of your customers. Using one system without the other is like trying to skydive without actually packing a parachute. It won’t end well for you.

As a painting business owner, your success relies on repeat clients. If you’re in it for the long haul, customers repaint the exterior of their house every 7-10 years. As a result, if you provide outstanding service to them this year, and properly track jobs in a CRM, then you have a foot to stand on when it comes time to repaint.

If you fail to follow-up with customers periodically, then you’re losing out on what should be an easy sale.

Additionally, if you’re not following up with customers after every job, you’re doing it wrong. When a job is done, and the customer is happy, that is the perfect time to ask for a referral and a review. If you get a referral, then you already have a foot in the door for booking an estimate.

If you get a review, then anyone who finds your business on Google gets to hear how great of a company you’re running.

Both of these outcomes are crucial for the success of your business and keeping your sales pipeline full. And getting a handle on your sales pipeline is a surefire way to almost guarantee continued growth.

For more free tips on how to grow your business, visit this link. We’ll only send you the best content for growing your company.

In the course we go over how to get your painting business to over a million dollars in annual revenue with easy to follow systems that have helped over 1,000 painting business owners grow a successful company.

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About Me

I’m Eric Barstow, creator of Painting Business Pro, founder of National Painting Group & Foothills Painting, Co-Owner of Painter Choice. I’m disrupting the painting industry, and helping thousands of painters start or improve their businesses. I love what I do!